Category: Friends and Family Events

Several Minimally, Strangely Or Barely Documented Evenings, Plus A Family Event In Chipping Norton, Late September 2007

20th September: TS Awards

That would be a Third Sector Excellence awards night, at which CharityShare the Best Charity Partnership Award. I minimally wrote a Now & Z/Yen piece about it here at the time.

22nd September: Jacquie & Len’s Yom

Traditional gathering for the breaking of the fast, not that many of us fast. Even fewer this year, as this was the first such gathering without dad. I’m not sure anyone was quite on best form that year with the shock of it all, apart from Jacquie who will have laid on a magnificent feast as always.
Briegal table from a later year but the look would have been similar.

26 September: Middlesex AGM?

This cannot have been the AGM, which has to be in April, so perhaps it was just an end of season forum. Sportnetwork has lost the vital 2007 MTWD reports, but fortunately this one was written by Barmy Kev who sent his report to me for editing and uploading. So here it is:
MTWD Lost Masterpiece: Barmy Kev’s 2007 End of Season Forum Report – Unedited Version, 26 September 2007

27 September Kim & Micky

Janie and I went to see Micky’s new offices in Hatton Garden and then went on for a meal with Kim & Micky. I cannot remember where we ate that time but it might well have been The Bleeding Heart.

29 to 30 September

We went out to Chipping Norton to help Charlie celebrate her 21st birthday. We stayed in the Crown and Cushion, where the event was held. Janie and I took The Duchess with us.

I remember we hated staying in the Crown and Cushion. Several times we hinted to Tony that we’d prefer to stay somewhere else, but he would insist that the management had changed or a refurb had been done since the last time…

…but in truth our sense of the place was that it simply got worse every time we stayed there.

You’re not exactly spoiled for choice in Chipping Norton.

Anyway, it made sense to stay there on this occasion because it was the venue for the big event. The family gathered as did friends and in-laws. Charlie seemed very happy with the event and I recall some informal gatherings before and after the main event to make a bit of a weekend of it.

Janie made some notes in her diary which i think were the original plans for our visit to Cambridge to see Charlie a few months later – which was a better documented and photographed event from our point of view:

Cambridge Weekend with Charlie, 26 to 28 January 2008

Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Maida Vale, 13 September 2007

My diary suggests that I at least planned to go to an Ivan Shakespeare memorial dinner on 13 September 2007.

In truth, I don’t recall this particular one. It was just a few weeks after my dad died, so I might have skipped it, but I have a feeling I was there. In those days we always gathered in the (now defunct) Café Rouge Maida Vale.

Image from AllInLondon.co.uk https://www.allinlondon.co.uk/restaurants/restaurant-1227.php

The story of the NewsRevue writers alumni dinners generally is explained in the following piece from 2017:

Ultimate Love and Happy Tories, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 3 March 2017

Mercifully, we have a contemporaneous, verbatim report of the 13 September 2007 evening from John Random, who wrote:

Thanks to all those who braved the Tube Strike/Floods/Terracotta Army Delete As Appropriate  last night to come to the 24th Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, an annual event that takes place four times a year in the old scout hut.  For those of you who couldn’t make it – perhaps because you were in an oil-rich/war-torn/fat-free/Delete As Appropriate country, there is however good news. The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners are now available on Second Life.  At the inaugural Second Life Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner a virtual Colin Stutt exchanged virtual quips with a digitally-enhanced Barry Grossman.  Sadly, a virtual Keith Whickham had to cry off at the last minute because his avatar had a job on Third Life, while Hugh Rycroft couldn’t make it because he was in Pond Life.  The whole dinner can be now downloaded into your lavatory bowl if you’re not feeling well.  But please remember to put what you want in the subject line as dinners may contain spam.

So that’s all explained then. On reading that review, the evening starts to come back to me, so I’m guessing that I was there.

Dinner With Charlotte At The Ealing Park Tavern, Then The Glass House Kew, 14 July 2007 & 7 September 2007, not 4 August 2007

Charlotte (Charlie) went through a small phase that summer of staying with us overnight Saturday to Sunday and we’d take her out to dinner.

The first of the two that summer was an excellent gastro pub, the Ealing Park Tavern.

Still well regarded at the time of writing – click here for a link to reviews.

The second was at the Glass House Kew.  Trendy and very good food if I remember correctly.  Click here for reviews.

I originally thought the second evening was 4 August, but we needed to postpone that one due to my dad’s indisposition, so we rescheduled for 7 September.

The weekend before that, 1 September, Anthea and Mitchell came over to to Sandall Close for dinner.

Thems was very pleasant evenings, thems was.

 

Holiday Weekend With Hil and Chris In Bristol, 25 to 27 August 2007

I think this might have been our first stay at the Hotel Du Vin in Bristol. It was very good and friendly back then.

We tried the Bistro there on the first evening, taking dinner with Hil and Chris there.

On the Sunday,  Hil & Chris threw a family barbecue for the holiday weekend/my birthday, which was all rather pleasant.

I wasn’t in the most celebratory mood that year, just a few weeks after dad’s death.

Still, the weather smiled on us and Hil laid on a pretty splendid barby, as one might expect.

We also enjoyed the big Hotel Du Vin breakfast, I seem to remember. And the big bath in the room we had chosen.

Dad’s Funeral, South London Crematorium/Streatham Park Cemetery, 13 August 2007

In the orthodox Jewish tradition, the funeral takes place very rapidly after death. But mum and dad had opted out of the orthodox way and had planned to be cremated. Hence the week’s interval between dad’s demise and his funeral.

The funeral took place at South London Crematorium/Streatham Park Cemetery at 14:30 that day. The funeral was officiated by the Streatham Liberal Synagogue’s Rabbi. I wrote and read a eulogy which I shall upload here, with any other artefacts I think worthy of retention, when I go through the relevant papers.

We, family and friends retreated to the house in Woodfield Avenue after the funeral, for a simple reception. I think Janie and I (which means Janie, really) organised the catering. A nice young woman whose name escapes me, who had quite recently catered a celebratory event for us. Janie will remember her name…

…took a bit of research, but it was of course Jo Buckingham of TRUFFLEhound.

 

Dad’s Collapse and Death, 3 August to 6 August 2007

It is all a bit of a blur, really.

I know that Steve the window cleaner came that Friday morning, but I can’t remember whether I got the call from mum before, during or after his visit. Soon after Steve left, I think.

Dad had collapsed at the foot of the stairs trying to get up to bed the night before; mum had found him there in the morning and called an ambulance.

My recall is very patchy. Dad was unconscious when I got to St George’s Hospital. I remember hanging around for quite a long time with mum and seeing a specialist with her and Janie quite late in the day. I remember the specialist explaining that one of dad’s hips had broken when he collapsed, but that basically the scans revealed that dad was riddled with cancer and there was nothing they could do other than keep him comfortable and free from pain.

I think mum insisted that we just take her home on that Friday; I recall she was much calmer that first day than on the subsequent days.

On the Saturday, Janie and I had arranged to see Charlotte for the evening – I think she came to us for dinner and I think we went ahead with that at mum’s insistence. Dad had not really regained consciousness on the Saturday in any case, so there was little we could do. Mum was in “I can cope” mode.

I recall that dad was conscious when we visited him on the Sunday. He was positive and upbeat (the doctors had told him they were checking everything out and would do everything they could for him, which I suppose was true in a way) but he was high as a kite on painkillers and told us some rather strange stories about stuff that had happened in the night, which must have been dreams or hallucinations but clearly were very real memories to him in his drug-fuelled state.

Mum was not in a good way by the Sunday – really very anxious and distressed, I felt. Janie was with us that day. I think we took mum to some sort of a restaurant place on Garrett Lane (more Wandsworth than Tooting). Janie recalls that she perked up quite a lot during that meal/distraction.

I was going to go again on the Monday after gym anyway, but while at the gym got the call (via Janie) that dad had died peacefully overnight. Naturally I went straight to St George’s to join mum. Mum was strangely calmer that day; probably exhausted more than anything else. Probably also in shock. In any case, from that point on, the process of going through formalities takes over for a day or so and I was able mostly to lead on those. Numb still; my memories of the subsequent formalities are also a bit of a blur.

Bridge With Andrea, Maz and Gavin, 18 April, 5 June and 31 July 2007

It seems Henry had dropped out of the group by then, to be replaced by Gavin. Maz for some reason at that time was unwilling or unable to host, so the events were held:

  • 18 April 2007 at Andrea’s;
  • 5 June 2007 at my place;
  • 31 July 2007 at Andrea’s again.

An October plan got postponed/cancelled so that was pretty much it for that year. No wonder I only got worse at the wretched game, playing so rarely. Plus ca change…

…Andrea and I had some weird bants by e-mail about baby-sitting and similarly tending to pet animals. I think this was probably connected with some strange excuses we were hearing or something like that. The thrust of the joke is lost in the mists of my poor memory and time.

Dinner With Mum, Dad and Janie at Lamberts, Balham, 29 June 2007

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A painful memory, this one. Not for the dinner itself, which was a culinary and social success, celebrating Janie’s birthday.

Painful, because we now know that dad only had a few weeks to live. There were just a couple of clues on the  night.

Dad was just shy of 88 and was finding it harder to get in and out of the car without help, but on this occasion he needed a lot of help; far more than he had needed before.

The other clue was that dad didn’t finish his meal. He said the food was very good but that he didn’t have the appetite for any more than he had eaten. This was a very unusual thing for dad to do/say, but we thought little of it at the time.

In fact, dad was riddled with cancer by then. In early August, when he collapsed and we were given the news that he was in such a bad way, the specialist couldn’t believe that he had been more-or-less symptom free until five weeks before he collapsed.

There are a few other photos from the evening including the one above – click here if you want to see them. 

Janie and Phillie’s Party, Sandall Close, 23 June 2007

This was a great party. Wonderfully well organised by Janie, with themeing help of course from Kim.

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The theme was tropical, as Janie and I had been to Cuba and Jamaica earlier that year.

It was the early days of iPod use for me, but I made up a well cool iPod playlist, which I have maintained (as best I can) and printed in pdf form here – 2007 Caribbean Party In Full.

The food was catered by Jo Buckingham of TRUFFLEhound. Olivier the butler and his team were hired to look after the guests. We also put a lot of effort into designing an amazing rum cocktail to be a centrepiece for the drinks.

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So what could possibly go wrong? Well, unfortunately I went down with the raging sh*ts overnight the night before, which left me not much use to anybody all day. I tried to sleep it off for most of the day, hoping to be fit by late afternoon onwards. But I didn’t get far when I tried getting up and helping out around 16:30, so I went back to bed again until just before the guests arrived.

As it turned out, I managed to get through the party more or less, but only by keeping away from the wonderful food and drink we had put so much effort into specifying. It really was only a 24 hour bug-type thing, so I was able to try leftovers on the Sunday, but that’s hardly the same thing.

Kim quasi-secretly hired a “butler in the buff” for the party. Naturally he arrived and needed to change soon after I had sloped off to the bedroom to lie down for a short while – as it turned out an even shorter while than I had intended. Here is a discreet picture of the gentleman:

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There are lots of photos from this event – some of them leaving very little to the imagination in the “buff butler”department.  The full monty (as it were) of the photo album can be found here.

Dinner At John & Mandy’s Place In Cambridge Road Wanstead, 21 April 2007

Janie and I were trying to trawl the details of this evening from our memories.

I remember travelling to the house by tube, getting a little lost walking from the tube to the house and then travelling home by cab.

 

Image “borrowed” from an estate agent’s site. Right road, probably wrong house.

We both remember having a really good time.

We both remember that the girls were there and that they were now old enough to join us and participate in much of the evening.

Did we take a stroll around the neighbourhood that time or was that a different evening?

Janie remembers taking drinks in the garden.

Janie remembers dancing with the girls in the living room.

Janie remembers roasted vegetables with thyme and Balsamic vinegar.

Janie remembers conversation about Sartre, existentialism and that sort of thing.

We both wonder whether all of Janie’s memories of this particular evening relate to this particular evening or whether several evenings have merged into one collection of memories.

I am 99% sure this was our last visit to John and Mandy in London – i.e. it was Saffron Walden the next time we visited. But frankly I’m not much help on this one memory-wise.

“JOHN! MANDY! You’re better at this than we are. What did we eat? Are Janie’s memories impressively good or a mixture of different evenings?”

Whatever – we know we had a great time.